Innovation Watch Newsletter 1.17
September 7, 2002

SCIENCE

Scientists Complete Physical Map of Mouse Genome - [USA Today] An international team has completed the most comprehensive map ever of the genetic code of the mouse, an accomplishment that will make the laboratory animal more useful to scientists studying human health and disease. The map covers an estimated 98% of the order of the nearly 3 billion letters that make up the mouse code, or genome.

West Nile Virus Will Sweep Across Whole U.S. - [New Scientist] West Nile virus is continuing to sweep westwards across the US, with 88 confirmed cases and five human deaths so far in 2002. The mosquito-borne disease was first recorded in the US in New York in 1999 and experts think it will have swept across the entire continent by the end of this summer, or the next.

Muscular Dystrophy Gene Breakthrough - [Ananova] Scientists have discovered the genetic cause of one of the most common types of muscular dystrophy. Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy is the third most common form of the crippling disease and affects the upper body.

Stem Cell Implants Could Save Limbs - [MSNBC] Injecting a patient's own stem cells into their leg muscles could create new blood vessels, eliminating pain from bad circulation and helping to prevent gangrene or amputations, new research indicates.

Language Gene Discovery May Chart Rise of Human Dominance - [Ananova] Researchers have discovered chimpanzees lack key parts of a language gene critical for human speech. The finding may help explain why only humans use spoken language, which is thought to have been behind our rise as the world's dominant species.

Racing to the 'God Particle' - [Wired] Physicists from all over the world are racing to prove the existence of a particle that's surmised to be at the heart of the matter. Literally. Dubbed the "God particle" by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman, the Higgs boson is a controversial particle believed to bestow mass on all other particles.

Microorganisms Grow At Low Pressures, Implying Possible Life On Mars - [Science Daily] Using a unique device known as the Andromeda Chamber to simulate conditions found on Mars, University of Arkansas researchers discovered that certain microorganisms called methanogens could grow at low pressures. Their findings imply that life could have existed on the Red Planet in the past, present, or that it could do so at some point in the future.

Intel Makes Nano Leap - [Internet News] Intel Corp. announced plans to use a technology that stretches the atoms apart in a silicon wafer, a process that mass-produces the world's smallest transistors. The Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker's big leap into the nanotechnology era extends on the "strained silicon" technique first adopted by competitor IBM Corp. but Intel would be the first to use it in large scale production.

Winged Robot Learns to Fly - [New Scientist] Learning how to fly took nature millions of years of trial and error - but a winged robot has cracked it in only a few hours, using the same evolutionary principles.

Sony Scientist: Robots Need Culture - [ZDNet] Luc Steels, a professor at the University of Brussels and director of Sony's Computer Science Laboratories in Paris, wants to make robots more like living things by teaching them how to express themselves. It is a concept that has met with resistance from some quarters.

Blogging for Dollars - [Business 2.0] Businesses are starting to use weblogs as powerful tools for knowledge management and communications.

Robots May Carry Out Heart Surgery - [BBC] Robots may soon be carrying out complex heart surgery at a Tyneside hospital. Doctors at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle want to introduce a revolutionary, computer-controlled, system which uses robotic arms to conduct operations.

Tiny Ventures - [Red Herring] Circuits made of molecules will supplant silicon...eventually. But for now, the smart money is starting small.

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BUSINESS

China's Biotech is Starting to Bloom - [Fortune] Made-in-China clones, plants, and drugs? The People's Republic has made big steps on the long road to global power in commercial life sciences.

Making Change Stick - [Business 2.0] Most change-management efforts fail. But General Electric's was massively successful and still works. Here's what it can teach us.

Size is Not a Strategy - [Fast Company] The faster big business cleans up its ethical mess, the sooner we can address the real crisis of capitalism. Giant companies dominate the landscape -- from media to medicine, banking to broadband. But talented people don't want to work for them, customers hate doing business with them, and Wall Street doesn't want to invest in them. A candid appraisal of why so many big companies (even the honest ones) don't work -- and some radical ideas for reform.

Pouring It On - [Washington Post] The Starbucks strategy? Locations, locations, locations.

A Little Honesty Goes a Long Way - [Fortune] Investors are rewarding companies for something that is sorely missing these days: honesty.

Global Climate Change Threatens the Insurance Industry - [ENN] When winds reach 120 miles per hour, houses begin to crumble, walls break and roofs fly away. With global climate change, winds like this are coming more often. In the United States during the last three decades, the number of weather-related natural disasters has increased five-fold.

Toyota and Honda, Not Made in Japan - [Economic Times] Japanese, yes. Made in Japan, no. Among the array of new car models vying for the attention of Japanese buyers this year will be two with unusual pedigrees - a Thai-made Honda compact and a US-made Toyota sports wagon.

Gamers Fight to be Living Billboards - [BBC] More than 6,000 people have responded to a marketing campaign that invites humans to turn themselves into billboards. UK computer games firm Acclaim UK is offering gamers the chance to legally change their name to Turok - the title of their latest computer game.

U.N. Cuts Rations as Afghan Food Aid Runs Out - [Reuters] The U.N.'s World Food Programme is being forced to cut rations for millions of hungry and vulnerable Afghans because international donors have failed to stump up promised cash, officials say.

China Bends on Birth Quotas - [International Herald Tribune] Under China's one-child policy, couples in this rural county in Jiangxi Province once needed a permit to have a baby. Women as a rule were fitted with IUDs after their first child, sterilized after their second. But times have changed.

Uranium is Whisked Away from Yugoslavia - [International Herald Tribune] U.S. and Russian officials have whisked away 45 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium from an aging nuclear reactor in Yugoslavia in a dramatic military-style operation described as the first of a series of preemptive strikes against the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Jordan Trembles at Prospect of War Between U.S., Iraq - [Miami Herald] If President Bush and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein come to blows, this kingdom will be caught in the crossfire. At best, the caravans of Iraqi oil tankers that cross into the kingdom at al Kamarah, representing Jordan's only source of fuel, would disappear. At worst, this country of five million people would become a battlefield over which Iraq and Israel would lob missiles at each other.

Zambia Rejects UN Appeal Over GM Food - [Mail and Guardian] The Zambian government on Saturday rejected a UN appeal to lift a ban on the distribution of genetically modified food, saying it would be able to procure enough other grain to feed its starving people.

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ENVIRONMENT

Plummeting Plankton Linked to Warmer Oceans - [CNN] Concentrations of microscopic plants that comprise the foundation of the ocean's food supply have fallen during the past 20 years as much as 30 percent in northern oceans, according to a satellite checkup of planetary health.

American Science Panel Details Risks of Gene-Altered Animals - [International Herald Tribune] The genetic manipulation of animals poses serious risks to the environment and potentially to human health, and national efforts to manage those risks are disorganized and probably inadequate, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences said.

European Floods Linked to Poor Land Management - [New Scientist] Fresh evidence links some of Europe's worst ever flooding to global warming, and to poor land management practices.

Global Warming Threatens Africa - [BBC] A new report by a conservation group warns that food and water supplies in Africa could be put at risk if global warming continues at the current rate.

Scientists Agree World Faces Mass Extinction - [CNN] The complex web of life on Earth, what scientists call "biodiversity," is in serious trouble.

Solar Tower is Nearing Approval - [E4 Engineering] The one kilometre tall Solar Tower power plant being developed by EnviroMission Limited will be the first solar powered conventional electricity generator to consistently supply 200 MW to Australia's main grid. Excluding hydroelectric power, it will reportedly be the largest single renewable energy plant in the world.

World Bank Panel to Review GM, Other Technologies - [ENN] Genetic modification (GM) and other controversial farming techniques will face an international scientific jury to see if they are safe under an initiative unveiled by the World Bank Thursday.

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THE FUTURE

Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance - [NSF/DOC] Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science. A report of the U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Commerce.